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Women considered "undesirable emigrants" are waiting for Ellis Island to be recaptured by the steamship company that brought them in 1902. (Library of Congress)
Marc Fisher
Editor-in-chief reporting on a wide range of topics
The Know-Nothings wanted the German and Irish immigrants to leave because they were supposedly subversive and sick and were stealing US jobs. White preachers and politicians of the 1820s urged liberated blacks to settle in West Africa, supposedly for their own good.
From this campaign to encourage blacks to return from where they came to the waves of nativist attacks directed against Catholics, Jews, Asians and Hispanics in almost every generation that followed, the rhetoric of "going home Is as American as immigration itself.
The brutal assertion of the nativist language by President Trump, during attacks on Sunday and Monday against four women Democrats in Congress, all US citizens, three of whom were born in the country, not only concords with its long history of Attacks against people he perceives as the other, but also also with the nation's oscillating attitudes towards immigration.
According to Calvin Coolidge's warnings in the 1920s that the country was becoming "a dump" and that "America must remain American," the speech "America: like it or let it The presidency of Richard Nixon indicates that the country's leaders fought for two years. centuries with central ambivalence about its central identity as a magnet for immigrants.
"They must love our country," Trump said on Monday, adding that members of the House of Commons should "go back and help repair the totally devastated and crime-plagued places from where they came." hate our country. . . . They are free to leave if they wish. "
Trump's comments have been criticized as racist, nationalist, nativist and ignorant, even as some of his supporters have defended his statements as brusque but necessary claims that new Americans have an obligation to support their adopted country.
An illustration shows a man showing arriving immigrants labeled as "German Socialist", "Russian anarchist", "Polish vagabond", "Italian brigand", "English convict", "Irish poor", etc., in Castle Clinton, New York . . A leaf at the feet of Uncle Sam reads: "Mafia in New Orleans, anarchists in Chicago, socialists in New York." The judge told Uncle Sam: "If immigration was properly restricted, anarchy, socialism and the mafia would not bother you anymore. and such evils! "(Library of Congress)
There is virtually no ethnic or racial group in the country that has not been told to return home. In collections of voices of the Japanese-American internment camps from the era of the Second World War, in the diaries of early Italian and Irish immigrants, in novels and Jewish memoirs of the early twentieth century, this insult is a pillar .
Sometimes it's a reaction to political protests: "If you do not like it here, go back where you came from."
Sometimes it is a reaction to foreign conflicts, a violent reaction against peoples whose ancestral homes – Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan – have become a battleground for the US military. Americans of Asian descent targeted by such insults could respond, "We are here because you were there," suggested Elaine H. Kim, professor of American-Asian studies at the University of California to Berkeley.
"Love it or leave it" is not necessarily a form of racist exclusion, "said Christian Appy, historian at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst." In the 1960s, this meant that whatever the flag was, it had to be supported, but it also had a racial component because Nixon was courting middle-class whites who had traditionally voted for Democrats.
The rhetoric that angrily tells his compatriots to "go home" can be racist, nationalistic or both, said Appy. "They overlap and reinforce each other."
Most historians link the origins of American anti-immigrant politics to the first big wave of newcomers to the country after the birth of the nation.
"You can not live under the Trump administration and be a 19th century historian and not think about the Know-Nothing party all the time," said Amy Greenberg, professor of history at Penn State University. In 1848, the American population was 17 million and the foreign-born population of 1.7 million. Six years later, the foreign-born population had more than doubled, with most immigrants coming from Ireland and Germany. And most of the newcomers were Catholics, entering an almost entirely Protestant nation.
The resulting reaction took the form of a new political party, officially the American party, better known by its nickname "Know-Nothings". Its members have launched openly anti-immigrant speeches, calling in particular for newcomers to be boarded by ships to return to their country of origin. In the early 1850s, the party was appointed governors, particularly in Maryland and Maine.
"The loud cry was 'expel immigrants who are criminals,'" said Greenberg. "They were really aware of the Bible teaching in public schools," believing that Catholic texts were subverting the King James version.
A detention pen located on the roof of the main building of Ellis Island contains emigrants held for deportation in 1902 (Library of Congress).
Calls to send some Americans back to their ancestral lands often came when immigrants or former slaves fought the status quo, said Ibram Kendi, director of the American University's Center for Anti-Racism Research and Policy.
"When people of color in particular have resisted American institutions or America in a profound or even radical way, some have generally responded," We do not change, so you have to go back to your country, "did you say? -he declares. .
From 1817, white preachers and politicians, including James Madison, created the American Colonization Society, which recruited freed slaves and other free blacks to settle in West Africa. The company is focused on buying and releasing slaves and paying a colony in what was to become Liberia. Many members of the group opposed slavery, but some abolitionists have come to see the work of society as an effort to send talented blacks out of the United States, reinforcing the institution of slavery. .
"The paradox, of course, when it comes to blacks who are descendants of people who are enslaved to the United States, is that you are telling people to come home after their forced transportation here," said William Darity, a professor of public policy in the United States. Duke University.
From generation to generation, the "homecoming" rhetoric has peaked during periods of heightened immigration, said Thomas Pettigrew, a social psychologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, who is studying the discrimination and immigration.
Yet it was also at this time that public opinion became more receptive to newcomers to the country.
"There are two facts about immigration that are true at the same time," Pettigrew said. "The more immigrants you have, the more they are perceived as a potential threat to" my job "or" my community. "But at the same time, the more immigrants you have, the more contacts you have with them. immigrants, and contact is the most effective way to reduce prejudice. "
Immigrants arrive at Ellis Island in New York in 1907. (Library of Congress)
The welcome message addressed to immigrants by the Statue of Liberty – Emma Lazarus' classic poem embracing "crowded masses yearning to breathe freely, the miserable waste of your teeming shore" – was written in 1883 and integrated into the iconic symbol of the nation in 1903, as the country absorbed its largest wave of newcomers. And the message was posted even as the country was passing laws designed to exclude a large number of undesirable immigrants.
Trump's political viability came shortly after the Republican Party adopted an "autopsy" – his study of the party's prospects after Barack Obama's two presidential victories, which concluded that they needed to be transformed into a welcoming home for Blacks, Latinos and Americans of Asian descent.
But Trump has combined his campaign slogans on prioritizing America and giving America back its place with what Pettigrew called his "undisguised recourse to prejudices ranging from dangerous Muslims" "to the Mexican" rapists "to get a picture of politician who participate in political correctness.
Trump developed his rhetorical tools long before entering politics. "Go back to where you come from" was one of the pillars of the right talk radio at its peak, and Trump was an avid consumer of such shows from the 1970s.
"I'm fed up with those damn immigrants," said Paul Paul Emerson in 1994 on San Francisco's KSFO, a station that has been hugely successful on what are called "burning words." "They should all go home." Emerson suggested that California taxpayers "go out and shoot at illegal immigrants crossing the border."
In New York, where Trump grew up, this kind of language was very used during his debut in the business world. Trump was a big fan of Bob Grant, who hosted a prominent talk show in New York from 1970 to 2012. Grant often referred to welfare recipients as "flies" and black criminals as "subhuman froth" and was once the subject of a New York magazine profile. entitled "Why he hates blacks."
Grant sometimes had guests from the extreme fringe, including William Pierce, whose National Alliance was for many years one of the most prominent neo-Nazi groups in the country. Pierce would explain to Grant's hearing, composed of many Italian compatriots, as well as many Jews, Catholics and immigrants from around the world, why many of them should be sent packing.
In 2011, Grant joined Trump to fan the flames of birtérisme, the invented idea that Obama was hiding a foreign birthplace. Grant began to demand a candidate for the presidency of the party, which he said would have the backbone to resist even "when they consider calling themselves racist, which, for most white Americans, is the kiss of death ": Donald Trump.
Eugene Scott contributed to this report.
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